Good News Garden
The Garden Story
Little seeds that flower, then fruit.
A note from the grandmother, mother, and storyteller who made them.
Good News Garden
Little seeds that flower, then fruit.
A note from the grandmother, mother, and storyteller who made them.
If you've said no a thousand times this week, and the bedtime routine feels more like negotiation training than a sacred ritual, I want you to know something:
You don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to plant something.
The seeds you are planting now won't bloom and bear fruit in the years to come. The story you read tonight stays with them longer than you know. The truth you whisper into the dark, even when you're not sure they're listening, it lands.
I promise you. I've seen it grow.
That's why we built the Good News Garden. For your children. For my grandchildren. For the long game that's harder to see when you're in the weeds.
I know now, because hindsight is 20/20.
Here's the thing about planting seeds: you don't always notice how much they grow every single day. Until one morning, you wake up and realize they're flowering.
I am a mother of three children. I was not a perfect mother (just ask my children).
I have said it, "No, not now," "Because I said so," or "Just go to sleep" more than I would like to admit.
I was exhausted too, in the way parents of young children are exhausted, not dramatically, just steadily, like a phone that never quite charges back to 100%.
I also thought, did I tell them enough that they were loved? That they had a special purpose? That the world did not get to decide who they were?
Sometimes. Not always. Not as often as I wish.
You say, You are loved. You are enough. You were made on purpose, and think, Is this doing anything? And you're never sure they hear it, really hear it.
Then your child hits school age (oh, how hard the middle school years are).
Someone at school won't sit next to them. A friend group closes a door. Someone says something that could have shattered them.
And you watch. You hold your breath.
And then you see them reach for something. Something steady. Something that was planted before the world got to them.
That's when you realize those seeds were growing.
Not because you were perfect. Not because every bedtime was sacred. But because somewhere in the ordinary mess of raising a child, enough truth got planted that there were roots to hold onto when the storms came.
My son got married a few years ago. His gift to me was a copy of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, with a little note tucked inside.
He's a grown man. He had a hundred things he could have given me. And what he thought of, when he thought of everything that shaped him, was a book we read when he was three.
I held that book and thought: That's it! That's what good fruit looks like.
My daughter, meanwhile, is in her thirties and can sing every VeggieTales song ever made from memory. Full performance. Any place. Any time. Zero warning. She carries those songs in her body the way she carries her childhood, lightly, joyfully, like something that belongs to her.
Neither of them can really explain why. They just know those stories are theirs.
That's what I wanted for my grandchildren.
There is a particular kind of love that comes with grandchildren that I didn't know existed before I experienced it. It's different from being a mother, bigger in some ways, more urgent in others. As a mother, I was in it. Surviving it, mostly. The days were long, and I couldn't always see past the end of the week.
As a grandmother, I can see further.
I can see my daughters, amazing mothers, trying so hard to do all the right things, even when they're too tired to notice. I can see the moments they are making that matter. The ones that won't feel like moments until years later, when their babies reach for something steady and it's there.
I wanted to give them tools. Stories that plant the things that hold.
But when I went looking for books that were fun enough to be requested and true enough to matter, books that opened conversations instead of closing them, that wove faith in gently instead of announcing it, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.
So I made them.
I have spent three decades working with high-tech executives. And it turns out, that was excellent preparation for making children's books.
And it turns out, that was excellent preparation for making children's books.
Because my work was never really about technology. It was about people. About asking the questions that help a group find their own story. About drawing the pictures that helped them tell it. About creating the conditions for a team to say: Yes, that's us. That's where we're going. That's who we are.
When people are given a question instead of an answer, the story becomes theirs. They take ownership. They act on it. They carry it.
It works the same way with our children.
My son didn't carry The Giving Tree because someone told him what it meant. He carried it because he was little, and it made him feel something true. And he never forgot the feeling.
There's a concept in business called first principles thinking. Strip everything down to what is fundamentally true and build from there. For Good News Garden, the first principles are simple:
Good News Garden Stories are meant to help children and parents grow together — rooted in love, shaped by truth, carried by joy, and nurtured by God.
The characters. The garden world. The illustrations. The questions at the end of each story.
This is what I was looking for when my grandchildren were born. This is what I wanted to create. I hope you find it here too.
One story. One bedtime. One small, brave seed.
That's how gardens grow.
With love from the garden ✦
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